Steve Jobs Honored as The Most Influential Person in the Video Game Industry

Late Apple chief Steve Jobs has been honored with many well-deserved titles during his illustrious career. But the latest top honor may come as somewhat of a surprise to many.

A recently conducted survey among video game industry professionals shows that Steve Jobs is widely considered to be the "most influential person" in the video game industry today. Besting a who's who of industry veterans - including Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto - the survey of 1,000 industry insiders gave the top spot to Jobs, who "won" the poll by plurality with 26 percent of the vote. Jobs also nabbed 46 percent of the top five winners’ vote.

According to the London Games Conference, which sponsored the survey, here are the big winners:

Steve Jobs 26%

Gabe Newell 16%

Shigeru Miyamoto 7%

Tim Berners-Lee 4%

Mark Zuckerberg 3%

Correspondingly, here's what the survey respondents listed for the top five products to have shaped the contemporary video game landscape:

Apple’s iPhone 17%

Nintendo Wii console 7%

Xbox Live 3%

The original PlayStation console 3%

Steam 2%

“In just over three years the iPhone and the App Store have transformed what consumers expect of games, and how the industry makes and sells them – today, download games have come to the fore. Steve Jobs, the iPhone’s driving force, was the ultimate independent developer – uncompromising in his vision, with unquestionable influence, and hugely artistic and commercial results,” says Michael French, editor in chief, MCV, the leading trade magazine of the video games industry.

Yeah.....no. My he rest in peace, but SJ doesn't even crack the top ten in video game industry influence. BungieIW (the old IW not the new one)Valve etc etc. These studios have done more for the video game industry than SJ could/would have done if he had lived twice as long. Again, I'm not taking any credit from SJ, or trying to trample his INCREDIBLE legacy. But come on...

What a load of crap. He even stated himself that Apple accidentally fell into gaming with iOS. But still he did nothing for gaming. The game devs did.
It'd be like awarding Bill Gates for Gaming cos PC games run on windows.

Gabe Newell did more for the industry as a whole than Jobs did. The mobile gaming platform was already built and Steve just enhanced it. Chances are this survey was given to people who think Angry Birds is considered mobile gaming.

What a joke. This is what happens when you get a bunch of politically correct liberals in a room voting. They forget all of the facts and vote purely off of emotion. This is the same reason why we have a complete moron as the president of the unites states right now.

What a joke. This is what happens when you get a bunch of politically correct liberals in a room voting. They forget all of the facts and vote purely off of emotion. This is the same reason why we have a complete moron as the president of the unites states right now.

A moron huh..... where did you go to college? Were you editor of the Harvard Law Review? Have you ever joined the senate? Have you ever been the president?

The same people that can't recognize that Steve Jobs (maybe not him directly, but the iPhone) created a new facet to the gaming industry are the same people that keep going back to making the same old **** that fails at every release. Mark Zuckerburg is on there for some very similar reasons that Steve Jobs is. Did they make games? No. Did they help create a platform that changed the game industry? Yes. Did either of them do it intentionally? No. But did Isaac Newton set out that one day and knew an apple was going to fall on his head? No. Facebook presented a new look at gaming, and a rise to the Social Gaming genre. Something that will attest to that is Zynga's rise as a company and their current status. Everything they have, they made it from their games on Facebook - and while Farmville is the most popular and the most talked of - it's certainly not the only one. The iPhone created a whole new market for games. These are simple, fun, and mobile games. You no longer have to carry around a PSP/DS in addition to your phone to play games - you play them straight on your phone. And most of the games on the iPhone can be created in the time and with the team that's 1/10th of what a regular game development time/team would be. The sheer drop in cost and time of development allows indie dev to push out their games, and thus filling the market with many more unique game and ideas. You can now be a 18 year old college Freshman, with enough time, passion, and a unique idea - you can make thousands if not millions off of it through the App Store. If that's not "revolutionizing" the industry, then what is? Since when did a 18, or even younger, aspiring game developer get a chance to prove himself so easily? The "traditional" gaming market developers rarely dare to veer off their path of "sure income" games. Did he do this intentionally? No. But the iPhone wasn't really "intentional" either. Apple never thought of the phone, but actually the iPad first. It was only until Jobs saw the technology that his team was creating for the iPad that he decided to make a phone out of it.

What a joke. This is what happens when you get a bunch of politically correct liberals in a room voting. They forget all of the facts and vote purely off of emotion. This is the same reason why we have a complete moron as the president of the unites states right now.

Politics have nothing to do with video games... unless you're talking about how GTA ruined and corrupted the world. I think for some odd reason you like to blame liberals for everything in life you disagree with.

No offense to anyone, but this is utterly absurd. Jobs shouldn't even be in the top ten in this category. I am sure if you asked the right people they would also agree he was the most politically influential person ever (or insert any other ridiculous claim here).